PONTIFICATE OF POPE FRANCIS YEAR 2014 - COMMEMORATIVE COIN 2 EURO

25th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

The fall of the Berlin Wall during the night of the 9th and 10th of November 1989 marked a very joyous and unimaginable surprise for the inhabitants of East and West Berlin. For 28 years this border strip was strictly patrolled by technical and military means, dividing the city and conditioning the lives of its inhabitants. The Wall suddenly became passable even for the people of East Berlin as a result of the "Peaceful Revolution". Beginning in 1975, the white wall of reinforced concrete visible from the west and the complex system of border fortifications became the defining image of the divided city, a symbol of the Cold War. The irreversible process of the city's reunification began in the days following November 9th when the border troops of the German Democratic Republic, accompanied by jubilant Berliners, started to remove individual segments of the wall to create more crossing points. Beginning in March 1990, before the German Democratic Republic began to remove the 45 thousand wall segments, Berliners themselves started the demolition process. Even the night the Wall was opened, they brought out their own hammers and chisels to start removing the first small fragments. In the autumn of 1990, the last sections of the wall were saved to be kept as a monument. Today it is difficult to notice the past division of the city. Only a small section of the border strip and segments of the wall are kept as a historical monument inside the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer street.